On Tue, Dec 20, 2011 at 1:40 PM, Bastiaan Bergman < [email protected]> wrote:
> Mary, > > I'm looking into cooling, it won't be finished for the first version > though. You can't just stick the reactor in a bath as the top and > bottem of the reactor have things (eg electrical wires) sticking out > from them. My plan is to use a 'springy' kind of copper tube coil, > that sids around the middle of the reactor. Haven't looked into > 'springy' copper tube though,.. suggestions are welcome. Specific > suggestions for a pump, flowmeter and water temperature sensors are > welcome too. > > As long as we don't attain tremendous fusion power I think cooling at > the air will be sufficient. > > Cheers, Bastiaan. > If you're going to air cool, you may wish to supplement your temperature measurements for calorimetry with heat flux measurements. Heat flux transducers, already calibrated, are commercially available (Google is your friend). Some are not terribly expensive. In a pinch, you can reverse a Peltier (thermoelectric junction) cooling plate in the sense that if you have a heat flux through it, it will give an output millivolt signal which is roughly linear with the heat flux. However, those are rather insensitive. But they are cheap. You can also make a Seebeck effect "envelope" calorimeter using the method Storms used. It's tedious but cheap. If you plan on doing that, either Jed or I can find you the instructions on line. You have to seal your top and bottom anyway and all sorts of cheap underwater electrical connectors are available commercially so the idea of the water bath is still something you may wish to consider. Bottom line: I think if you have continuous calorimetry sensor output recording of some type, you will have a better idea more easily and faster if you find something that works well. Otherwise, it's easy to fool yourself with temperature measurements on or in an uninsulated device in a changing environment. Also: if you get real fusion, use caution. Lots of it. Heating fluids and gas in a closed vessel can result in what amounts to a pipe bomb with shrapnel. Fusion, in theory, can make lots of power very fast in a very small volume from which heat can not escape well. People have been killed with "in pipe" experiments of various types, many times in the past. Don't make an ash out of yourself.
